Alison Ross, Walter Benjamin’s Concept of the Image

In this book, Alison Ross engages in a detailed study of Walter Benjamin’s concept of the image, exploring the significant shifts in Benjamin’s approach to the topic over the course of his career. Using Kant’s treatment of the topic of sensuous form in his aesthetics as a comparative reference, Ross argues that Benjamin’s thinking on the image undergoes a major shift between his 1924 essay on ‘Goethe’s Elective Affinities,’ and his work on The Arcades Project from 1927 up until his death in 1940. The two periods of Benjamin’s writing share a conception of the image as a potent sensuous force able to provide a frame of existential meaning. In the earlier period this function attracts Benjamin’s critical attention, whereas in the later he mobilises it for revolutionary outcomes. The book gives a critical treatment of the…

Yes, thanks dmf, I found the M&M paper some time back and have saved a few bits from it in my evernote but it’s worth revisiting. The pun of “messy antics” and “messianic” is quite twee, but I suppose quite clever in any case. Thanks for your comments.

Your question about taking away the messianic from WB is an interesting one. Benjamin doesn’t oppose the “spiritual” implications of the messianic to its political implications. There’s some kind of a distinction, but the two are intimately related. (I think I’ve got that right.) So I don’t think you can take it away. You’re just left with a kind of idea about the course of history and a kind of hope for some sort of revolutionary change but without much idea of the shape that this might take, or why.